Into the Quagmire
by Norroen Dyrd
Summary: A fan fic set in Skyrim and dwelling on the subject of the Dragonborn - that is, my player character, Remedios Saavedra - having her soul trapped in Vaermina's realm and consequently rescued by a team of friends.
1. Screams

The scream was loud and throbbing, shattering the drowsy silence as if it were glass. Its shrill echo rang on and on long after the scream itself was cut short by a painful choking sound - and hardly had the echo trailed off into the night, when there came another scream, and then another, and many, many more, wild and piercing, almost animal-like, never ceasing, each one more desperate and heart-wringing than the one before it.

They all heard the screams, but not everyone dared to leave their quarters and investigate. When the first scream burst in on her, tearing through her sleep like something feral and clawed might tear through a delicate fabric, Brelyna sat up in bed with a violent jerk and remained this way, hugging her knees and gaping into the darkness, her eyes overflowing with liquid terror. J'Zargo, on the other hand, wrapped from head to foot in his blanket, which made him look like the desert roamers of his far-off homeland, tiptoed into the hallway and poked his head cautiously into Onmund's bedroom, with an anxious half-whisper, 'J'Zargo hopes his cooking hasn't disagreed with friend Onmund, no?'.  
'Not funny,' Onmund snapped; he had leapt out of bed and was standing in battle position, a spell sizzling in each cupped hand, but despite all his bravado, his knees were more than a bit wobbly.  
'Well,' J'Zargo remarked sensibly, 'If it wasn't friend Onmund who ruined J'Zargo's beauty sleep, J'Zargo will go check elsewhere'.  
'W-wait,' Onmund said shakily, his voice almost unheard in the all-flooding torrent of screams, 'I'll be right behind you'.  
But J'Zargo had already slipped away into the gloom, and when Onmund finally mustered enough courage to follow him, he found the Khajiit occupying himself with the sly contemplation of Ancano, who was standing in the middle of the hall, arms crossed on his chest and robe collar pulled up as high as possible to conceal the unbecoming puffiness that anyone's, even the most handsome Altmer's, features assume in the small hours of the morning.  
'What is the meaning of this?' Ancano hissed, making use of a brief pause between two screams, 'What kind of establishment is Archmage Aren running here?'  
His venomous inquiry had obviously been not directed at J'Zargo and Onmund personally, for instead of waiting for a reply he wheeled around and marched off, muttering something indignantly to himself. The moment he left, the two apprentices, rather confused by such a rapid succession of dramatis personae, were joined by Mirabelle, who came racing down the stairs, her face alarmed (Nirya had dug her head into the pillows and firmly stated that if the students wanted to blow themselves up, it was none of her business; Arniel was too busy wondering who was screaming to actually come down and see - and Enthir was even busier protecting his numerous belongings from unknown invaders), and by Tolfdir, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and, grabbing Mirabelle frantically by the hand, exclaimed, 'You must come and see it! It's Remedios, you know, the new Breton girl... Something's wrong with her - terribly wrong... Oh, and someone,' he made a vague gesture in the direction of Onmund and J'Zargo, 'Someone go and fetch Arniel... And Drevis. They might know what to do'.

It took the effort of several mages to hold her down in order for Drevis, ruffle-haired and a bit too over-excited by what was going on, to be able to cast a calming spell on her. And before he finally managed to do it, she had been screaming - screaming all the time, her fingers tearing wildly at the bedclothes, her mouth wide open, frothing and twisted in a way that made her face unrecognizable, her eyes glassy and unblinking and streaming with tears. Subdued at long last, Remedios stopped screaming and writhing, but the inhuman look of pain and horror still remained on her pale face, and tears still came gushing down her cheeks. Almost all the College mages were now gathered in her doorway, exchanging bewildered, troubled looks and faint whispers that were like the rustle of dying leaves.  
'Well?' Tolfdir asked eagerly, when Arniel and Drevis finished their low-tone concilium at the newest apprentice's bedside, 'What do you make of it?'  
'It's fascinating!' Drevis began zealously, waving his hands, 'I have never seen...' Arniel gave him a meaningful nudge in the ribs, making him check himself with a sheepish cough, 'Oh, right, sorry. I got a bit carried away. Well, the nub of the matter is that our poor Remedios here has her soul trapped in another realm... One of nastier ones, I'd wager'.  
Someone gasped. J'Zargo whistled. Enthir swore. Brelyna accidentally swallowed the tip of her thumb nail that she had chewed off in anxiety.  
'How on earth could the girl have gotten her soul stuck in Oblivion?' Nirya asked, raising her eyebrows.  
Arniel shrugged his shoulders, 'Who knows? A failed Conjuration spell... An angry Daedra Lord...'  
Tolfdir started, his mind suddenly pierced by an almost unbearably vivid flashback. He envisioned himself, sorting through some papers in his quarters several days before, and young Remedios bursting in, her face flushed after staying out in the cold, her flyaway red hair sprinkled with crystals of melting snow. He remembered her saying, with an apologetic smile, 'Oh, Master Tolfdir, I'm so sorry I missed your class... again. I swear it wasn't my fault! It's just that I had a little mix-up with Vaermina in Dawnstar...'  
'A little mix-up with Vaermina in Dawnstar...' Tolfdir repeated out loud, understanding dawning on him.  
'What was that?' Mirabelle asked sharply.  
'Oh, don't you see?' Tolfdir began explaining, hurriedly and a little impatiently, as all of us do when we try to tell the others about something that seems so obvious to us, 'The poor child has somehow managed to anger Vaermina, who has in turn sucked her soul into...' his face fell and his voice grew several degrees quieter, 'Into the Quagmire'.  
After a second round of gasping, whistling, swearing and nail-swallowing in the dumbfounded audience, someone in the background voiced what everyone else was thinking, 'How will we get her soul out of there?... We will, won't we? R-right?'  
'I - I don't think that's even possible,' Arniel said falteringly, 'I'll have to consult the Mystic Archives, of course... But perhaps we should just make do with transporting the child, in this comatose state of hers, into the Midden...'  
Brelyna, who had stopped choking on her fingernails, reacted with such passion that those who stood next to her edged away. 'You can't do that!' she cried out, stomping her foot indignantly, 'You can't just stuff her in the Midden with the rest of your failed experiments and forget all about her! Would Meme,' she used the pet name under which Remedios was known to her friends, 'Would Meme just stand by if one of us got trapped in Oblivion? No, she would do anything in her power to help! And so must we! At least us apprentices will not let our friend suffer! We may not be as smart or as capable as you...'  
'Friend Brelyna should speak for herself,' J'Zargo cut in, 'J'Zargo is the best!'  
She ignored him, '...But at least we care!'

'Something tells me you don't have a plan,' said Onmund after Brelyna had stormed out into the courtyard, the other two apprentices jogging meekly in her wake, leaving the rest of the mages mulling over her oration in awkward silence.  
'Actually, I do have a plan,' she replied self-assuredly, 'We are heading to Dawnstar. I am sure we will find all the answers there'.


	2. Jester

'J'Zargo does not find friend Onmund's shortcut to be particularly short,' observed the Khajiit, sending what must have been his tenth Horker into the open sea with a well-aimed fireball.  
'It _is_ short!' Onmund protested, leaping from one ice floe to another, 'The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? And the straight line between Winterhold and Dawnstar passes along the shore of the Sea of Ghosts!'  
J'Zargo snorted into his whiskers, 'The shortest distance between two points is the one that does not have so much snow and ice and water... and Horkers'.  
'That's not a Horker, that's my wife! Eheeheehee!' said a voice that didn't belong any of the three apprentices, coming from somewhere out of the snowy murk around them and accompanied by a loud burst of shrill, manic laughter.  
'Who - who's there?' Brelyna cried, swivelling her head round in panic.  
'Nobody!' the voice sang, its echo bouncing off the jagged edges of the glacier, 'Nobody, nobody, nobody!'  
'This one begs to differ,' his eyes two flaming slits, J'Zargo peered through the veil of grey slush and pointed at something only his keen sight allowed him to discern, 'You are certainly no nobody!'  
'Smart kitty, smart kitty,' came the leering reply, as a curious blurred shape stepped forward out of the snow, 'Have a carrot!'  
Huddling instinctively together, the three apprentices gaped at the stranger that surfaced in front of them, squat, bandy-legged, wild-faced, and dressed in a most bizarre way, like some kind of jester. He, in turn, eyed them from head to foot with amused curiosity, and then said, his lips warped by a grin that sent a shiver down the spines of at least two of the apprentices, 'Never mind Cicero. Cicero was just ambling along on his way, looking for his Listener'.  
J'Zargo pricked up his ears, 'Listener? As in... the Dark Brotherhood Listener? But...'  
The jester clapped his hand against his mouth, bulging his eyes dramatically. 'Dear oh dear!' he cried, shaking with silent malignant laughter, 'Cicero shouldn't have let it slip, now should he? Now Cicero will have to go stabbity stabbity stab!'

It happened all at once, in a matter of seconds: he who called himself Cicero pulled out a dagger and plunged at Brelyna, who stood nearest to him; Onmund leapt in front of her, shielding her with a Ward; J'Zargo crept up to the jester from behind, fireball ready - and a winged shadow slid across the glacier, and the ice cracked at the sound of a dragon's call.  
They all froze as they were, in mid-struggle, heads thrown back, blinking off the snow that blinded them, watching the dragon as it circled in the sky, coming lower and lower, each breath a gust of icy wind.  
'ALL TOGETHER!' Onmund bellowed, directing a blast of flames at the great beast's scaly chest; Brelyna and J'Zargo followed suit; the dragon screeched with pain and swept down on them, its claws grazing the ice with an unbearable scraping sound. They barely had time throw themselves on the ground and roll out of the dragon's way - but Cicero grabbed hold of one of its legs and as it soared up again, enraged at having some squirming little creature cling onto it and attempting to shake the jester off, down into the sea, he burst into a gleeful, incoherent song, dangling his legs in the air and not letting go despite all the beast's efforts. The dragon roared, so preoccupied with getting rid of the jester that it forgot all about the three young mages on the ice below. Agile as he was, J'Zargo was the first to spring to he feet; he hastened to help the others get up, murmuring softly to himself, 'J'Zargo is beginning to like that crazy little man'.  
'He tried to kill us!' Brelyna protested as she resumed her aim at the dragon, which was now short of tying itself into knots, snapping at the jester with its teeth and looking like a gigantic dog chasing its tail in mid-air.  
'You've gotta admit, he does have a sense of humour,' said Onmund, rummaging in his robe for a magicka potion with one hand while steadily frying the utterly confused dragon with the other, 'Meme would so have enjoyed this!'.  
Sighing mournfully at the mention of Remedios, Brelyna suddenly stopped casting her flames and exclaimed, eyes widened, trembling forefinger pointing up above, 'Look! Look at him go!'  
Cicero had somehow managed to push himself up the dragon's leg onto its tail and was now crawling along its spine, a faint glint of his dagger barely visible between his jaws. His progress was slow and constantly interrupted, but eventually, the three apprentices never ceasing to follow his progress with their dumbfounded gaze, he reached the beast's head and, guffawing triumphantly, struck it between the eyes.  
With a deafening bawl of pain, dark blood spurting down its snout, the dragon flapped its wings feebly for one last time and tumbled down, Cicero still gripping onto the small horn-like growths on its head. It landed into the sea with a tremendous splash, chipping off the narrow margin of the glacier as it fell.  
Staggering as the ice beneath their feet gave way, the young mages stepped back and watched, petrified, the glittering white shards disappear into the heaving darkness of the sea.  
Presently, Onmund came to his senses, slipped out of his robe and, rubbing his flesh to keep warm and puffing out white wisps of vapour, jogged towards the edge and dove in before either of the other two could so much as say 'What in Oblivion do you think you are doing?'

The sea was a greenish-grey haze of scorching cold, pressing hard on his shoulders from above and gripping him like vice from below. Holding his breath till he could taste blood in his mouth and his chest was on the verge of bursting, he searched the dragon's remains, tangled in the softly swaying seaweed; he found Cicero curled up among the rocks at the beast's side, unconscious, his face deathly white in the faint light that was coming through the narrow rifts between the ice floes. He grabbed the jester by the arm pits, as though he were an animal cub, and started working his way painfully upwards, desperately running out of air, Cicero's water-logged garments weighing him down, his eyes fixed on the slabs of ice that marked the barrier between him and the surface, with a frantic inward prayer that they would not shift and the gap he was aiming for would not disappear.  
He burst through, gasping and spluttering, just as the floes of ice were beginning to slide together, took an ravenous breath of air and waved cheerfully to Brelyna and J'Zargo, who hurried to find a less steep way down in order to help Onmund get ashore.

They intercepted him when he had crawled onto a narrow, bare strand of dry land, flinging Cicero in front of him like a potato sack. Brelyna handed Onmund his clothes, blushing a little, and fished in the unfathomable depths of the satchel on her belt for a bottle of frostberry juice solution to help Onmund warm up after his dive, while J'Zargo made an improvised campfire out of driftwood and went on to trying to revive Cicero with a healing spell, giving Onmund a sly side glance every now and then.  
'Friend Onmund has put his natural cold resistance to good use,' he smirked.  
'Well, he did help us bring down the dragon!' said Onmund, squatting down by the fireside and helping himself to snowberry juice.  
'I wonder if it's dead for good,' Brelyna muttered fearfully, 'I mean, without Meme...'  
'J'Zargo thinks dragons can be killed without friend Remedios. Friend Remedios just consumes their souls...'  
At that moment Cicero, who had been lying on his back, colour gradually coming back to his face after J'Zargo's repeated healing sessions and a drying spell Brelyna had, somewhat hesitantly, cast on his jester's costume, opened his eyes, whizzed up to his feet and cried excitedly, 'Did Cicero hear you right? You have a friend called Remedios, who consumes dragons' souls? But that's... that's Cicero's Listener!'  
Brelyna stared at him blankly, 'No, it can't be! She'd never... I mean, something as... evil as the Dark Brotherhood Listener... That's not like her at all!'  
'Oh, but the Listener is not evil!' Cicero objected vehemently, 'She has her ideas about justice and honour... She...' he whimpered a little, 'She doesn't let Cicero go on killing sprees! She even ignores the Night Mother if she tells her to kill people she doesn't want to be killed! Most disgraceful, Cicero thinks, but the Night Mother puts up with it... Cicero may have his own ideas, but the Night Mother and the Listener know better...'  
Onmund cut his ramblings short, 'We'll talk about Remedios - your Listener's - secret occupation later. What matters now is that she is in terrible danger, and we are going to save her. If you value your Listener's life, you may join us, but,' he glared meaningfully at the jester's dagger, which he had miraculously managed to save during his fall, 'No funny business!'  
'Of course,' Cicero replied eagerly, 'Cicero may disagree with his Listener, but she has always been such a good, good friend to Cicero! Cicero will join you on this noble quest to save her - and trust Cicero when he says that he will be as sombre as a grave! Speaking of graves, did you hear the one about the Necromancer and the skeleton? There is this Necromancer, see, and he walks into a graveyard late at night, drunk as can be...'

The four rescuers trudged off in single file, their feet sinking deep into the snow; the clouds overhead, which had dissolved a little while they were fighting the dragon, were darkening again, each swirl a silent warning. The day was going to be very snowy.


	3. Priest

He mentally compared himself to a miser who creeps, late at night, into a room where he keeps his most prized possession locked up in a chest and, placing a candle on the floor by his side and glancing suspiciously around to make sure no one is watching, opens lock after lock, lifts chain after chain, and when all the clicking and jingling and rattling is done, takes his treasure out, hands trembling, and gazes at it lovingly, and brushes the dust off it with soft, fine cloth, and turns it over to see the light dancing on its sides, and passes his fingers over it as a gesture of fondness, gently, very gently, in order not to cause any damage... and puts it back hurriedly when faint footsteps are heard in the twisting corridors of his imagination. He too had a precious treasure hidden away in his mind, which he had taken to coveting - a memory of a little scene that had taken place not too many days before.

_'Never. I trust him'. Just four words. Four words that will leave an imprint in his heart forever. She says them suddenly, abruptly, responding to a voice that only she can hear. But he knows who that silent voice belongs to, and he can guess what it might have ordered her to do. He doesn't see her face, his attention focused on the Skull of Corruption, but he can easily picture it in his imagination, pale, frowning, eyes ablaze like two flawless emeralds in bright light. Still absorbed in performing the ritual, he begins to wonder, somewhere at the back of his mind, what Vaermina could have said to her - or might still be saying, for she has fallen silent, and he can feel that she is tense, strained, listening intently - to prompt her to kill him. The truth, most likely. The Daedra Lords seldom lie; but they have a way of telling the truth to mortals that breaks even the strongest of them. And the truth about him is ugly even if not warped by Daedric cunning. He is a liar, a traitor, and a coward, and has a past that looms behind his back like a shadow at evenfall, dark and disproportionately enlarged, with hands like claws and a face like a vision out of a nightmare. He deserves no trust, no mercy - and yet, she trusts him.  
She speaks again, her voice sharp and firm, making the blood rush up to his head as if he has drunk a gobletful of wine, 'No. I said I trust him'.  
His heart thudding against his ribs, his fingertips tingling with rapidly strengthening magic, he throws back his head, closes his eyes, and allows the bright light that her words have lit up within his heart to burst free, engulfing the Skull and sweeping it off into Oblivion. When he opens his eyes again, she comes up to him, smiling.  
'You did it, Erandur! You got rid of that accursed thing!'  
She hovers a bit, clearly unsure whether what she wants to do is appropriate. But he understands. With a kind of reckless abandon, which he himself can't quite account for, he puts his arms around her and whispers a barely audible 'Thank you'..._

He revelled in reliving this memory over and over, and when he finally realized what it meant, he knew he had to kneel before his makeshift altar to Mara and thank Her for bestowing upon him the greatest of her blessings.  
'My Lady, I ask You for guidance now that your sacred flame has been kindled in my heart...'  
Erandur's prayer was interrupted by the sound of loud shuffling footsteps and voices arguing at the temple's threshold.  
'J'Zargo is weary of wind and snow; J'Zargo thinks we should seek shelter in this ruin. It looks uninhabited'.  
'And I think we should press on until we get back on the right track again!'  
'We won't be able to, Brelyna, not in this weather. We'll just go on walking in circles'.  
'Well, it's your fault we are stumbling about like blind guars! 'I am a Nord, I will lead you through any storm!' Now look where your over-confidence got us!'  
'Okay, okay, I was wrong! Simmer down a little, will you? Let's ask Cicero, what does he think?'  
'What can he think? The man is crazy! I don't know why we are dragging him with us at all!'  
'Cicero dislikes being talked about in third person'.  
'Very funny!'

Erandur got up, frowning, and hurried to investigate the noise, readying a couple of Destruction spells, just in case.  
The intruders turned out to be a most peculiar little group: three youngsters, a Nord, a Dunmer, and a Khajiit, apparently apprentice mages, accompanied by an insane-looking man in the full attire of a jester - all of them more than a bit battered by the snowstorm that was raging outside.  
'Fancy!' said the Khajiit, whiskers bristling inquisitively, when Erandur emerged in front of them, 'So this ruin isn't uninhabited at all...'  
The Dunmer girl gave a little polite cough, 'Uh... sera... We are frightfully sorry to burst in on you like this, but... Do you happen to know the way to Dawnstar?'  
Erandur smiled, 'You have missed Dawnstar by a stone's throw. If you wait here until the storm subsides, you will see how close you are'.  
The Nord's face lit up, 'Does this mean you are letting us stay?'  
The Dunmer protested, tugging at his sleeve, 'We can't stay, Onmund! The more we tarry, the more Remedios's soul gets sucked into the Quagmire!... Se - sera? Are you all right?'  
'Yes,' Erandur said curtly, as soon as the icy claws let go of his heart and the temple stopped spinning round him, 'Come with me. I feel we have much to discuss'.


	4. Portal

Even though now Erandur had four helpers, the second search of the library proved hardly more efficient than the first one, when there had been only Remedios to assist him. Brelyna constantly got distracted with reading too far into the contents of any undamaged books she could discover, and J'Zargo, instead of looking for information, had to watch over Cicero, who just danced around wildly, throwing books in all directions, so the only one who actually did anything productive was Onmund. It was he who finally came across the book Erandur had described to them.  
'I say!' he exclaimed, brandishing a dusty tome with the outline of the symbol of Oblivion still vaguely visible on its cover, 'This looks like it... But it's written in gibberish'.  
'That's Daedric,' said Erandur, coming up to him, 'And, uh, you are holding it upside down'.  
Brelyna and J'Zargo snickered; Onmund glared at them angrily; while Erandur, ignoring them, leafed through the book hurriedly till he found the place he was looking for. 'There,' he declared, 'If we follow this tome's instructions, we will be able to open a temporary gateway through which you will travel to the Quagmire and search for Remedios's soul'.  
J'Zargo's nose twitched with distrust, 'We will travel? What about this one? Does he prefer to stay behind in the safety and comfort of the temple while J'Zargo and friends risk their lives in the realm of nightmare?'  
'Watch your tongue, Khajiit,' Erandur snapped, his eyes flaring up menacingly; ever since his disgraceful flight from the temple all those years before he had been reacting very painfully to any accusations of cowardice, 'I would have given anything to come with you, but... I can't. My spiritual bond with Mara prevents me from entering a Daedric realm. Besides, there is one more thing that needs to be done, and I will take the responsibility of doing it'.  
The question 'What thing?' was only too natural, and Erandur answered it in detail while moving about the library and making all the necessary preparations for creating a portal to the Quagmire.  
'In order for such a connection with Oblivion to last as long as possible,' he explained, lighting candles, searching for charged soul gems and casting strange, intricate, faintly glowing runes on the floor, 'we need an anchor. A person on whose mind the portal will feed to remain open - consuming memories, wakening fears... most likely, causing physical pain as well, for Vaermina is attracted to the suffering of both body and spirit'.  
Brelyna shuddered. Erandur looked up at her from his complex rites and gave her a small placating smile, 'I have to make myself useful somehow, haven't I? But... one of you will have to remain here and watch over me, sustaining my strength with a healing spell from time to time - because if I... if I die, the portal will close and you will be trapped in the Quagmire forever'.  
'But who will that be?' J'Zargo asked, eyeing his fellow mages expectantly.  
'Not Cicero. Definitely not Cicero. He'll only mess things up,' Brelyna said, with a disapproving look at the jester, who was busy making a little paper dragon out of what once had been a priceless manuscript. He started at the sound of her voice and instantly went into a sulk, 'Cicero does not want to be excluded from the rescue mission'.  
'J'Zargo suggests we cast lots,' the Khajiit murmured tactfully.  
This seemed a reasonable suggestion; beckoning to Cicero to come over, the three apprentices had Erandur turn away and piled up their lots on a bookshelf - a necklace for Brelyna, a ring for J'Zargo, an empty potion bottle for Onmund and a half-eaten carrot for Cicero. When they were ready, J'Zargo went up to Erandur, instructing him to close his eyes, and conducted him towards the lots. For a few moments the priest's hand hovered, butterfly-like, over the bookshelf, till finally his fingers closed in round the neck of the potion bottle.  
'Lucky, lucky Onmund!' Cicero sang, hopping on one leg, 'Onmund gets to stay alive!'  
Brelyna shushed at him angrily and pulled him by the hem of his jester's jacket into the circle that they were forming around Erandur, who had stepped into the place where all the runes he had drawn were crossing each other, took a deep breath and froze, his hand on his chest, waiting. It had begun.

At first, there was nothing but silence, broken from time to time by the muffled howls of the snowstorm and the sound of Cicero panting excitedly. Then there came a barely audible humming noise, and the glow of the runes on the floor strengthened a little; as the humming steadily grew louder and louder, the twisted, crisscrossing lines shone brighter and brighter, sprouting odd, jagged beams that looked like some kind of otherworldly cross between tentacles and lightning bolts; they slowly rose from the floor, sizzling and hissing, and crept stealthily up Erandur's body. Wincing with pain, biting hard into his lower lip and clenching his fists till blood started showing beneath his fingernails like droplets of dark dew, Erandur endured the beams' scorching touch as they twisted round and round him, gradually concealing him whole, as if he were a spider's prey, wrapped tight into a cocoon of sizzling, blinding whiteness. When the priest's face disappeared beneath a veil of bright glow, the humming reached its loudest point, making the four stunned onlookers clutch their heads; there was one final burst of light, and then the library was suddenly plunged into silent darkness, as though all colours and sounds had been wiped out in one tremendous sweep.

After an eternity of breathless waiting in the pitch blackness, they all blinked and rubbed their eyes simultaneously, for in the dark a flickering purple spark lit up; in a matter of a few seconds it swelled into a dazzling oval vortex, just the right size for a grown man to come through; in its uneven, pulsing light they could catch a glimpse of Erandur, suspended in the air a few inches above the floor, his head drooping down lifelessly, three narrow rays of light connecting him to the vortex like glowing threads, two coming from each of his temples and one coming from the left side of his chest.  
'Soooo niiiice...' Cicero said slowly, gazing at the portal, enthralled by its light like a moth that flies into the flame of a candle.  
J'Zargo gave him a slight push in the back, 'Come on, jester! The rescue mission won't wait!'  
Brelyna nodded to Onmund, touching his hand encouragingly with her fingertips, 'Good luck. Don't lose Erandur!'  
Onmund cast a discomforted look at the priest's face, which, partly hidden in shadow and partly illuminated by the unnatural purplish glow of the portal, looked more than terrifying, and forced a smile, 'We'll be okay. You don't lose yourselves in there'.  
'We'll try not to'.

They stood in a file, one behind the other, facing the portal, first J'Zargo, then Cicero, then Brelyna. Holding hands had been decided upon without any discussion; when entering a place like the Quagmire, one cannot risk being separated from the others. Just as J'Zargo was about to make the first step into the swirling vortex, Brelyna asked, her voice feeble and faltering, 'How... how are we supposed to... to actually look for Remedios? We never thought of that... did we?'  
But J'Zargo had already dissolved in the portal's glow, dragging her and Cicero behind them, and the only answer she received was the jester's shrill 'Squee!' of excitement and the wild beating of her own heart as the familiar world rushed away from her.


	5. Journey

'Doesn't look too bad to J'Zargo'.  
'Doesn't look too bad to Cicero, either'.  
'Oh, great! I begin my journey through the realm of the Daedric Prince of torture accompanied by two guys who speak of themselves in third person! And... and I think the ground is getting a bit too squishy'.

They had landed in the middle of what looked like a half-flooded tropical forest, deprived of all colour except grey and murky brown. The air was still and stuffy and so humid that they could almost choke on moisture while breathing. The water that slopped lazily at their feet reeked of stagnation; and there were vague shapes hovering in the air among the gnarled tree trunks, making sickening rustling noises - shapes with large, pale, many-faceted eyes - and they were almost sure that, if alerted, those creatures would dart straight at them and most likely enjoy a good feast. The only other things in this desolate place apart from themselves, the dying vegetation, and the watchful monsters far off, were the portal, hovering above a pool of reeking, bubbling mud, and a ray of light, straight and fine like a gigantic needle, that came out of the portal's middle, piercing the dank air, and disappeared somewhere in the misty bowels of the jungle.  
'J'Zargo wonders if this is the path that should be followed,' the Khajiit mused.  
'Could be,' said Cicero, 'Or then again, it could be a trap. Or then again, it could be the path. Or then again...'  
'Oh, stop that!' Brelyna cried out, making the pale eyes shift a little closer to them, 'It's not like we have any other clues. Let's get a move on!'  
She made a broad step in the direction where the light pointed - and fell through the thin surface layer of deceptively firm ground right into dark, greedily squelching water. Her shriek was instantly followed by the dry, dead leaf-like noise of insect wings. The inhabitants of the dreary forest were coming to get their dinner.

Cicero bounced about, slashing at the dark, unpleasantly furry limbs of the enormous bug-like creatures that had surrounded them, wings fluttering, mandibles dripping with venomously green slime, while J'Zargo, under the protection of a Ward, strained to pull Brelyna out. Overcome by the insects pressing at them on all sides - their number seemed to grow despite how many Cicero killed - they soon began to get weary; and just when Cicero dropped down to his knees, clutching at his shoulder that had been stung by one of the creatures, and when J'Zargo let go of Brelyna's fingers, letting her slip away into the bog, the landscape around them suddenly changed, with a rumble of thunder and a flash of light. The water evaporated, the trees crumbled into dust, and the insects vanished without a trace. If it hadn't been for Cicero's swollen shoulder and the pitiful, soaked, muddy look of Brelyna, who was tending to his bite, with many a cough and splutter, it could have seemed that the dead jungle hadn't been there at all.  
It was now replaced by a vast cemetery, reaching out as far as eye could see, the dull, even rows of gravestones interrupted every now and then by a ruined crypt or by a tumbled down statue, wringing its arms in a grotesque expression of grief. The ray of light was still there, however, slicing the bleak, overcast sky over the endless graveyard.  
Cicero beamed, flexing the muscles of his newly healed shoulder, 'Sweet place. Reminds Cicero of Falkreath'.  
'Glad you like it,' Brelyna said dryly, 'Let's follow that beam, shall we? At least now the land is more than dry'.

They walked for a short while without any misadventure; the new look of the Quagmire was depressingly flat and lifeless, but certainly not terrifying; J'Zargo even went so far as to admit that he was getting bored and bit disappointed.  
'Don't hurry to anger Vaermina, kitty,' Cicero warned him jokingly, 'Or else the dead will start grabbing you by the ankles and pulling you down'.  
It was hard to tell whether the jester's words had triggered the trap or it was just a coincidence; at any rate, they had little time for guesswork with their feet clutched tightly by skeletal hands, their fingers scraping frantically at the ground, trying to grab hold of at least something, and their lungs filling up with dry earth that made them choke on their own screams.

J'Zargo hissed and spat and clawed but they would not let go; his head tugged forcefully underground, he caught one last glimpse of the graveyard, now filled with dead hands, breaking through to the surface, swaying from side to side, making the dull grey plane look like a field of nightmarish flowers - then, he screwed up his eyes and prayed for the surroundings to shift again before he was suffocated or torn apart by the undead. He was on the verge of losing consciousness when the fateful sound of thunder finally came; never before in his life had J'Zargo been so thankful for anything.

This time, the Quagmire seemed to have assumed the likeness of a disturbingly large-scale butcher's shop, with the ray of light still passing along its blood-spluttered ceiling. Trying not to look at all the knives and carved joints and entrails more than was necessary and at times finding it hard to suppress the urge to vomit, J'Zargo and Brelyna pressed on, following the guiding beam; Cicero lingered behind a bit, his gaze wandering, almost dreamy, taking in all the gore that surrounded him with the same twisted smile that had frightened the apprentices so much during their first meeting on the snowy sea coast.  
'Hurry up!' Brelyna called out to him, turning back in alarm.  
'Cicero is hearing a voice in his head,' the jester replied merrily, 'The voice is telling him to kill you'.  
'J'Zargo thinks it's a bad idea,' the Khajiit hissed warningly, assuming a battle position.  
'Cicero disagrees with J'Zargo,' said the jester, picking up an exceedingly unappetizing carving knife.

The lightning struck when they charged at each other; the new, changed landscape, which now was an elaborate labyrinth with walls made out of distorting mirrors, saw J'Zargo sprawled on the ground, an ugly, gaping wound across his chest, and Cicero squatting down facing him, simpering childishly to himself.  
'You horrid, horrid little man!' Brelyna shouted, swallowing hot, angry tears, 'It's the second time you tried to kill us, and now it looks like you've succeeded!'  
The Khajiit groaned faintly; she leaned down towards him, attempting to cast a healing spell with her shaking hands. 'There, there, J'Zargo,' she cooed, stroking the fur on his face, 'I will do my best and it will all be alright, I promise... And you,' she turned to Cicero again, her eyes two burning coals, 'Turn around and leave. Follow the beam back to the portal. Now. Before I decide to stoop down to your level and kill you'.  
'Cicero is sorry... Cicero just listened to a voice in his head... He always does...'  
'Sorry, are you?' Brelyna's nostrils were flaring; she seemed swept away by the torrent of her own rage, the force of which was surprising even to herself, 'Well, I am sorry too! Sorry that we let you tag along with us! I knew it was a mistake! If Meme really is what you say she is... well, she will have a lot of explaining to do once I find her soul. Consorting with the likes of you!'  
His back bent in two, his hands hanging down limply, Cicero walked away in slow, mournfully shuffling footsteps. It was not long, however, before he bumped into a glass wall and stopped, looking up from his twisted likeness, which gazed at him sadly from the mirror, to search for the ray of light; but it was reflected tenfold in the warped glass all around him and almost impossible to find. Cicero gaped wildly about, muttering something to himself very fast - but soon, his muttering ended abruptly in a sharp cry, for he felt something smooth and icily cold push softly against his back and sides. He trembled all over and broke into a run, returning to where he had left J'Zargo and Brelyna, chased by the sudden realization that had illuminated the murk of his shattered mind. The walls were closing in.

He thought he could see them, but each time he only stumbled across their distorted reflection. He called out their names in panic, but the only thing that answered him were the walls, which echoed his tearful cry over and over. Out of breath, utterly lost, bruised from constantly hitting solid, unbreakable mirrors that kept pressing closer and closer, he finally flung himself on the floor with a wail of desperation. And just as it had done before, the lightning struck at the most climactic moment.

'He missed your heart by a few inches, the n'wah!'  
J'Zargo, now more or less healed, but still a little weak, for Brelyna's skill was not masterful, squinted at his Dunmer friend curiously; it was the first time he heard her swear.  
'Friend Brelyna really does dislike Cicero, doesn't she? Where is that funny little man, anyway?'  
'I don't know and I don't care,' she replied curtly, 'Let's go on. Shall I help you walk?'  
'No, no, J'Zargo will manage quite fine on his own. Ouch!'  
With a startled hiss, the Khajiit hurried to shake off a large flake of red-hot ash that had landed on his shoulder. They were now in the middle of a place that looked much like Mehrunes Dagon's Deadlands, or like Morrowind just after the eruption of the Red Mountain. The swirling clouds in the sky overhead, pierced by the ever-present ray of light, the quaking, cracked, hot ground beneath their feet, the jagged mountains on the horizon - all was red, different shades of it; the oppressive heat made it hard to move and breathe, and from above, it was raining burning ash.  
They trudged on, taught by experience to watch their step. The Khajiit sniffed anxiously at the air, 'J'Zargo hopes that all that rumbling is coming from his poor neglected stomach... But something tells him that it isn't'.  
His last words were drowned out by the deafening sound of an enormous fountain of lava bursting from beneath the ground right in front of them. They stared in blank terror as the cracks in the red earth grew deeper and it started crumbling away into nothing, leaving a glaring red abyss beneath their feet.  
'RUN!' Brelyna shrieked, and run they did, the ground slipping rapidly away like in a nightmare. They had just enough time to race up to a large, claw-like rock and grip onto its lowest ledge when their last foothold disappeared, leaving them hanging on for dear life over a stream of lava.  
The rock was hot, so hot that large, bubble-like burns swelled up on their fingers, and the level of the lava below seemed to be rising, making the air melt with heat - there was no way they could possibly hold on for long, and in few minutes Brelyna was already tempted to let go and be consumed by the glaring red death beneath; but she was prevented from doing so by a hand, firm and friendly, that came somewhere from above, gripping her tight by the wrist, while another hand got a hold of J'Zargo. Brelyna looked up through the veil of tears which her eyes had filled with in the sweltering heat - and gasped with surprise and anger, 'You!'  
Cicero giggled sheepishly, 'Cicero is sorry. Cicero will do anything to help his Listener and her friends'.  
'Well, he'd better,' J'Zargo grumbled, 'The rock is sinking!'  
With one tremendous jerk, the jester pulled the two young mages onto the ledge where he himself stood, and together they watched the hissing, bubbling lava draw ever closer, hearts beating, waiting for the thunder and lightning, which came only when their rock turned into a tiny island in the blood-red, fiery sea.


	6. Deus ex Machina

'Sometimes I wonder why Vaermina hasn't let us die yet,' Brelyna mused, as they found themselves on a narrow stone bridge spanning a bottomless black abyss, barely able to see a few inches ahead of them in the light of the guiding beam.  
'Maybe she is having lots of fun with us,' the jester suggested, 'Cicero knows he would be, if he were her'.  
J'Zargo snorted, 'Let's get on with our walking already! J'Zargo hopes no one here is afraid of heights...'  
Brelyna gulped.

They moved in small, cautious steps, one behind the other in the same order as they had entered the portal, arms thrown wide apart to keep their balance. Their progress was painfully slow, for at times the bridge was so narrow that there was not enough space to place one foot in front of the other, and in places there were cracks in the stone, which had to be stepped over with utmost care; once Brelyna caught her foot in one such crack and lurched forward, only Cicero's back ahead stopping her from falling.  
They had been walking this way for a few minutes when the darkness was split by yet another lightning; but when their blinded eyes were able to see again, they found that nothing had changed. They were still walking along the same bridge across the same bottomless void.  
J'Zargo was just on the point of making a joke about Vaermina running out of ideas, but instead he came to a sudden halt and spat out a curse.  
'What is it?' Brelyna asked, standing on tiptoe to see something other than Cicero's fool's cap.  
'The bridge is gone,' J'Zargo replied darkly, 'As in, it ends. There is nothing more than darkness all the way ahead'.  
'Oh, the bridge is not gone, it's just turned invisible,' said a hoarse voice from the dark, 'Try placing something on it, you will see'.  
J'Zargo gaped, ears pressed back against his head, at the glowing, ghost-like shape that loomed ahead of them, 'Who is this one?'  
The shape drew nearer; it was, indeed, a ghost - of a gaunt, haggard man in a torn mage's robe, 'Name is Arkved. Arkved the wizard. I have lost my way here and been trying to find it for quite some time. So I have become a little familiar with Vaermina's trickery. Trust me: the bridge is still there, you just have to walk even slower and avoid looking down'.  
Brelyna, who had finally managed to poke her head from behind Cicero's back and take a proper look at their new ghostly advisor, piped in, her intonation soft and pitying, 'You know, if you are stuck here, you can try following this ray of light all the way back. There should be a portal there, leading to the mortal plane'.  
Arkved frowned distrustfully, his worn face twitching in an odd grimace, 'Wait... You aren't saying that you are actually from... from beyond Oblivion? I thought you were figments of my imagination, conjured up by me to cope with loneliness!'  
'Well, Cicero is certainly real!' the jester grinned, 'Though he does sometimes doubt that...'  
Arkved rubbed his hands together in agitation, 'If you are real... This means that this strange light is also real! Assuming that what you say is true... I can go back! But if you aren't real... But, oh, what have I got to lose!' he laughed a wild, barking laugh, 'I will go and check this portal of yours. Oh, you can't begin to imagine how happy you've made me - even if you do exist only inside my head!' he spoke fast, his eyes darting to and fro insanely, addressing himself as much as the three rescuers, 'I think it's rather obvious that I left my body behind - and gods, how uncomfortable it's been, floating around without it! I hope nothing's happened to it - I mean, I rather lost track of time in here... What if I get back and it's already year 450 of the Third Era or something...'  
He glided off past them, mumbling to himself.  
'By Azura,' Brelyna whispered, 'Looks like he has been wandering in here for at least two hundred years... without realizing it... He's already out of his mind, and when he gets back to his body and finds only a skeleton... Poor soul! And what if... what if we...'  
'Stop that!' J'Zargo hissed, 'You are making this one nervous!'  
They crawled forward a little, each step an agony of fear, each inch of blackness that they had to leave behind, an eternity. For a moment, each of them was pierced, arrow-like, by a sudden terrible thought that the next lightning would never come, that the realm would stay like that forever... But Vaermina still had much in store for them.

The next scenery that they were flung into was an underground torture chamber; and, coming to their senses after the flash of lightning and the blank terror of the previous image of the Quagmire, they discovered that they had been shackled to the wall, the iron of their handcuffs cutting deep into their flesh and water dripping down on their heads from the dungeon's moss-covered ceiling, which was crossed by the ever-present guiding ray of light.  
Cicero shifted in his chains, looking round with a kind of morbid curiosity, 'The torturer - oh wherever could he be?'  
As if in answer to his question, the oddly curved tools that lay on a small table in front of them rose slowly into the air, completely of their own accord, and soared up to them, clicking and clanking metallically. The rest was obscured by wild, all-consuming pain.

'Masterful torture, masterful! Cicero couldn't have done it better himself!'  
Brelyna tore open her eyes, groaning. The three of them were lying, bodies twisted and aching, in a broad corridor where the walls, the floor, the ceiling - all was made out of deathly pale, eyeless, mask-like human faces.  
She staggered to her feet, casting a healing spell oh herself with one hand and with the other on Cicero, who, a broad grin on his face, was struggling to get up by her side. When they both straightened themselves up, they hurried to help J'Zargo, who was incapable of even lifting his head and looking around, the burning agony of the torture having added up to his half-healed chest wound. One of them must have accidentally stepped on the sore spot of one of the faces on the floor, for it opened its gaping, toothless, hole-like mouth and screamed, loudly and shrilly, much like Remedios had screamed back at the College; it was soon joined by all the other faces - and by Cicero, who must have felt obliged to give support to such a wonderful chorus; their screams filled Brelyna and J'Zargo's ears, and minds, and bodies; they flowed through their veins and throbbed inside their hearts. Desperate, terrified, unable to escape the screams, they broke into a run, Brelyna dragging J'Zargo, still shaky and wobbly-kneed, behind her by the hand, Cicero hopping lightly, almost gleefully, by her side. It was by sheer coincidence that they continued to move in the direction which they had set for themselves, for they had forgotten all about following the ray of light (which, it goes without saying, was still there).  
The screams followed them, like hunters follow their prey, sweeping over their heads in an ever-swelling torrent, till they could almost feel that they were screams themselves, three screams lost in the common chorus. Just as this seemingly endless chase reached its wildest, the thunder and lightning heralded the arrival of silence, so sudden and so complete, that at first it hurt them listening to it. The scene had changed yet again.

And so they moved on and on through the Quagmire, following the guiding ray of light, their surroundings shifting every now and then into something different, but always inventively terrifying. After the screaming faces faded away into darkness, they had to pass through another forest, this time even drearier than the one they had arrived at, where the trees had many-fingered, clawed hands that tried to grab them as they walked by. The forest was then changed into a long, twisting white wall, across which many shadows were creeping alongside their own, though there seemed to be nothing that could be casting them; these strange, dark, grotesquely distorted beings, as though they were feral predators stalking game in the wild, leapt at the shadows of J'Zargo, Brelyna and Cicero the moment they got the chance, and started tearing at them and throttling them, and every movement of the poor captured shadows was mirrored by their flesh-and-blood doubles, even though they had no visible attackers whatsoever. When, at long last, the wall vanished, it was replaced by a narrow valley filled with swirling mist that warped everything around to such a horrifying extent that the three travellers leapt away in panic from most innocent things, like rocks or dead trees, and even from each other. The mist having been lifted after the customary bolt of lightning, the three found themselves standing on the soft, moist tongue of some gigantic beast; they had to squeeze through its yellow, curved teeth the size of standing stones they had come across back in Skyrim, with reeking remains of food stuck between them, in an effort to climb out of the monstrous thing's mouth before it swallowed. The mouth moulded itself into another nightmarish scene, and that into another, and there seemed to be no end to the transformations. Many a time the travellers risked their lives, and their sanity - though that is rather arguable, since Cicero had none to risk in the first place - but no matter what traps and horrors Vaermina threw their way, they stuck together, each helping the others out as best he or she could. This journey seemed to be no longer about saving Remedios - at least, they mentioned her less and less often - but about keeping on the move and staying alive at all costs. They had got so accustomed to their ceaseless walking that they were rather startled when the ray of light finally came to an end, disappearing inside a gigantic hourglass that stood barring their way. J'Zargo, still the most weakened of the three, limped up to it, pressed his nose against the glass, peering inside with his sharp eyes, and uttered a loud exclamation in the tongue of Elsweyr. They had found Remedios's soul.  
Their friend's glowing, ghostly likeness lay curled up in the top section of the hourglass, and as they watched, awestruck, her limbs and body crumbled away into soft, weightless, bluish dust that trickled down to the bottom, where it assembled itself again into a half-transparent shape of Remedios, which soared up to the hourglass's top and dissolved into dust once more.  
'We have to break her free somehow!' Brelyna said anxiously.  
'Oh, but you won't be able to, little mortals!' leered an echoing, thunder-like voice over their heads, 'Not without my help'.  
Cicero looked up, waving his hand wildly, 'Hello, Vaermina! Nice place you got here!'  
The Daedra laughed a customary evil laugh, making them lose their balance and kneel down, 'Why, thank you, jester! I must say, you and your dear friends have been ever so amusing to watch... So stubbornly pressing onward to reach your goal. But, heroic as you might be, I can't just let you have your friend's soul, now can I? She has disobeyed my orders, and I have not quite finished punishing her. But if you are still so intent on being reunited with her, I think I will destroy your pathetic little bodies and have your souls at my disposal for all eternity!'  
Her second customary evil laugh was interrupted by another voice, also echoing and thunder-like, but male and speaking with a strange accent, 'Hey there! What do you think you are doing?'  
'You!' Vaermina breathed, seeming to forget all about the three mortals she was taunting, 'What are you doing in my realm, you buffoon? Don't you have a plane of your own to watch over? What was it called again, Shuddering Isles or something?'  
'That's Shivering Isles, you ignorant!' the second voice bellowed indignantly.  
Cicero clapped his hands with glee and did a merry little dance, 'Sheogorath! Sheogorath! The Madgod! The Lord of Cheese and things! Oh, Cicero loves Sheogorath - not as much as his Mother, but still! Sheogorath to the rescue!'  
Brelyna stepped on his foot to make him shut his mouth; in the meanwhile, the Madgod went on, 'But that's beside the point now - I've come to stop you from torturing my mortal!'  
'Your mortal?' Vaermina choked with rage, 'What do you mean, your mortal?'  
'Well,' Sheogorath replied, chuckling, 'She is actually mine and Sanguine's, but I get to have her on weekends. Azura could have asked for a share in ownership, too, but she likes Dunmer more... I hear she also likes cheesecake. Oh, and Sithis also seems to have a claim on this mortal, but I never really asked him. The fellow is rather hard to approach, not being a Daedra, besides, he gives me the creeps...' he made a shuddering noise like a dog shaking water out of its fur; Cicero reacted to his words with a vigorous nod of approval, but it seemed to have gone unnoticed by the Daedra. 'Anyway,' Sheogorath concluded, 'You have no right to usurp this girl's soul like that!'  
Vaermina snorted, 'What has gotten into all of you lately? Stealing my mortals away from me... First Mara, then you...'  
'Uh-uh-uh!' the Madgod sang teasingly, 'I repeat: not your mortal! My mortal! And the mortal of quite a few other gods, too! But mainly my mortal, because once upon a time, when all the trees were bread and cheese - well, not really - I used to be one of the girl's ancestors! You have to look out for your own, you know!'  
The two Daedra went on arguing for quite some time, pretty much along the same lines, while the mortals listened to them in bemused silence.  
'J'Zargo thinks it's quite a plot twist!' the Khajiit purred softly to himself after a particularly loud outburst of gibberish from the Madgod.  
'Cicero likes the turn for comedy!' the jester said with a chuckle.  
'Well, Brelyna believes it's time to act!' the Dunmer declared firmly, conjuring up a battle axe and charging at the hourglass.  
Vaermina and Sheogorath were so absorbed in their heated verbal duel, raised voices splitting the sky over the realm of nightmare, that even the great, crashing sound of breaking glass did not prompt them to stop and check what the mortals were up to. And they were up to many things, mainly helping Remedios's soul slip free through the glass shards - oddly enough, the light beam that had led them to her now seemed to be moving together with Remedios, linked somehow to her chest.  
'That's a well-timed arrival if I ever saw one,' Remedios remarked when she, together with the ray of light, finally floated out of the hourglass's remains.  
J'Zargo squinted his eyes slyly, 'Does friend Remedios mean us, or the Great Skooma Cat up there?'  
Brelyna gave a little cry of exasperation, 'Does it matter? Let's get out of here before Vaermina recovers her dignity and turns us all to ash!'  
Cicero groaned like a child faced with extra homework, 'Walking through the Quagmire has been great fun, but Cicero doesn't think he will stand any more of it!'  
'Relax, my dear little madman,' said Remedios with a patronizing smile, 'If you had done dungeon-delving as much as me, you'd know that the way back is always a shortcut...'  
She fell silent, gazing in wonder at the beam coming out of her chest, which had started crackling and broadening. 'Odd...' she muttered at length, 'I feel as though this... this thing is tugging me somewhere...'  
Brelyna gestured to the other frantically to step closer to Remedios; the light swelled to a dazzling stream that carried them along like driftwood, back to the portal. Remedios turned out to be right: they whizzed to their starting point, which seemed to them, after their long, tedious, excruciating journey, to be miles and miles away, in a matter of a few seconds. And hardly had they caught their breath when the purple vortex sucked them in and the Quagmire was no more.


End file.
